Telefonica Moviles has beaten expectations with a 28% rise in nine-month profit. The improvement was helped by a growing number of clients in Brazil and Mexico, although Moviles' continued progress in its home market was the most impressive. The results highlight the wisdom of Moviles' decision to abandon Northern Europe and focus on the markets where it has a competitive advantage.

According to reports, Microsoft is developing a new graphics and animation toolset for its next operating system. The tool is already being referred to internally as a Flash-killer - but such claims should be taken with a pinch of salt, as much could change in the next three years.

Cisco CEO John Chambers says he is disappointed with the company's progress in the storage area networking market. Despite Cisco's attempts to improve interoperability between SAN switches from different suppliers, there are still few customers that want to use more than one brand of switch or director in their SANs, limiting the number of new customers Cisco can gain.

Xmas can be tough on those of us without the time or the inclination to spend hours traipsing round the stores to a backdrop of Yule muzak, wearily contemplating which lingerie/socks/jumper will bring a little seasonal cheer to a loved one.

News that the long government tradition of simply renaming unpopular concepts to make them "disappear" or become more palatable to a hostile public, comes with the Department for Transport announcement of the launch of www.nationalsafetycameras.co.uk.

Kim Schmitz, the German hacker-turned-gazillionaire, will have to defend himself in court against charges of embezzlement. Schmitz, who stills calls himself Kimble, allegedly rewarded himself with a "loan" of €280,000, paid by his company Monkey AG to his venture fund Kimvestor AG. Both companies are now bankrupt.

Eminister Stephen Timms and the minister for rural affairs, Alun Michaels, are to address a key conference which will examine how to bring affordable broadband to areas currently without high-speed Net access.

We recently looked at a Buffalo ISDN/802.11b access point/router in a home environment. Here, we look at a similar product - the Linksys Ethernet/802.11g access point/router - but this time in a small office environment. Although Linksys (now part of Cisco) firmly aims its products at the consumer and 'prosumer' markets, the WRT54g purportedly has all the capabilities needed by a small office, and is certainly marketed as such by Linksys' resellers. The box comes as a four-way 10/100Mbps Ethernet hub with wireless access, has NAT capabilities, and a built-in firewall with port forwarding and VPN pass-through. These functions make the WRT54g rather over-loaded for a home user, but ideal for small office users. And, at under £100, it's competitively priced, writes Clive Longbottom of Quocirca.

Reg ReviewNot so very long ago, you'd be laughed at for suggesting that what the handheld business needs is a budget-priced device to tempt consumers to buy into the PDA concept. You'd have been told that the customer base was dominated by affluent business executives and early adopters - both groups willing to spend big money on the latest personal information gadget. Why chase consumers with the low-priced, low-margin product they want when you can milk the old cash cow?

LettersWhat Apple enthusiasts lack in market share, they certainly make up for in optimism. Apple vs. the RIAA is a foregone conclusion. For some of our readers, the David and Goliath mantles have been reversed, and beggar your logic: Apple's new online music store, which doesn't own any record labels or music publishing properties, and which has begged but been refused the rights to sell low bitrate copies of The Beatles' back catalog, will soon make the copyright cartel beg for mercy. How? We'll see.

Site NewsHere's one for early birds, night owls and readers in far-flung countries. We are taking our servers offline on Wednesday, November 12 between 4AM and 6AM GMT. Fingers crossed, our planned downtime won't over-run. ®

Britain's bosses are getting tougher with workers who disobey Internet and email use and abuse policies.
Almost half (45 per cent) of employers in a study by IRS Employment Review said they had punished workers for such reasons in the last year.

How seriously does the U.S. government take computer intrusion? Seriously enough for the threat of foreign hacking to take a prominent role in new rules governing the FBI's national security investigations issued by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft this week.

Trilogy, the $457.8 million, three-phase modernization of the FBI's investigative system infrastructure, will now miss its delivery date of December 13, 2003. According to the General Services Administration, this is because Computer Sciences Corp missed a "critical delivery date". Regardless of where the blame should be laid, this is the last thing CSC needs as it becomes increasingly reliant on federal business.